Hakomi - Somatic Psychotherapy
Mindful, body based therapy to gently transform old patterns.
Short on words, big on change. Hakomi is a mindfulness-centred, body-inclusive approach that helps you discover—and update—the unconscious patterns shaping how you think, feel, and relate. Together we slow down, moving from the familiar story of the mind, to noticing what your body is saying, creating new experiences that let you move forward with more ease.
Tania has completed the official Level 1 and 2 Hakomi Professional Training, and is on the path to certification (Level 3) with the Hakomi Institute, integrating this method with her 13+ years’ experience in mindfulness and counselling.
Available on Sydney’s North Shore & online across Australia.
(no pressure, just a feel-into-fit)
Is Hakomi right for you?
What happens in a session?
We’ll spend short moments in guided mindfulness while I track subtle cues - tone, posture, breath, micro-expressions. I’ll offer simple, tailored experiments (a sentence, a pause, a posture) that often reveal the belief or memory underneath a reaction. From there, we support what was missing—safety, choice, comfort—so your nervous system can reorganise around something truer and kinder.
Expect: warmth, clarity, and usually one meaningful shift each session.
Your first session (what to expect)
You’ll leave with one practical takeaway (a breath cue, statement, or boundary action) to keep the momentum going.
Why work with Tania
Heart-led and practical
Kind presence, clear steps, and tools you can use between sessions.
Mindfulness & somatic expertise
13+ years helping clients gently reconnect to body wisdom and nervous system safety.
For individuals & groups
In-person on the North Shore and online, with options that suit busy lives.
Hakomi-trained practitioner: Tania has completed professional Hakomi training and is currently on the path to certification. This means you’re guided by someone deeply grounded in the Hakomi method and its principles of Mindfulness, Organicity, Unity, Non-violence and Mind Body Holism.
Learn more about Tania's background and approach here.
Clients often report
FAQ
It’s less about storytelling, more about felt experience in the present. We work with what shows up now—a sigh, a shoulder lift, a phrase—because that’s where change becomes real.
Sometimes emotions surface, but we go slow and stay resourced. Your comfort and consent lead.
Clients often notice a shift each session. Deeper patterns can take time, but direct, body-based work is typically more efficient than analysis alone.
Yes. We prioritise safety, pacing, and choice, always.
Hakomi is a mindfulness-based, somatic psychotherapy that helps you study yourself kindly. In brief moments of quiet attention, we notice how your system organises experience—beliefs, emotions, memories, habits—and invite updates that feel more accurate and freeing.
Hakomi rests on five core principles: mindfulness (curious awareness), non-violence (no forcing), unity (we’re in this together), organicity (your system knows how to heal), and mind–body wholeness (the body speaks the mind). These principles keep the work safe, respectful, and effective.
We use small, tailored experiments in mindfulness to surface the hidden “rules” you learned to survive. When those rules are seen and gently challenged, your nervous system can receive the missing experience—often safety, choice, being welcomed or protected—which rewrites the old pattern at its roots.
Tracking: I follow your present-moment cues—breath, posture, tone.
Contacting: I reflect what I notice so your system feels seen and safe.
Probes & “taking over”: brief statements or supportive gestures that reveal what’s underneath and offer relief.
Integration: we anchor new experiences so they stick.
Developed by Ron Kurtz and colleagues, Hakomi blends mindfulness with influences from body-based therapies and systems thinking. Today it’s enriched by insights from attachment, nervous system science, and trauma-sensitivepractice.
Key aspects of Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy
Experiential
Hakomi is grounded in the idea that true healing happens through experience, not just explanation.
In sessions, you’ll be gently guided to explore what’s happening beneath words and stories — to notice how past experiences live in your body today. This approach helps you uncover and shift the patterns that quietly shape your thoughts, feelings, and relationships.
Mindfulness-Centred
For more than 40 years, Hakomi has been at the forefront of integrating mindfulness into psychotherapy.
Together, we slow down and use mindful awareness to explore what’s emerging in the moment — sensations, gestures, tone of voice, or facial expressions. These subtle cues often reveal the deeper emotional blueprints, known as Core Material, that influence how you experience yourself and others.
Transforming Core Material
Your core material holds early experiences, emotions, and beliefs that once helped you adapt and survive but may now limit your growth.
Through mindfulness and somatic exploration, Hakomi helps bring this material into conscious awareness — allowing new choices, perspectives, and healing experiences to emerge naturally. When these old patterns are met with compassion and curiosity, real transformation occurs.
A Safe and Attuned Relationship
Healing happens in the context of a safe, trusting, and attuned relationship.
In Hakomi, you are met with deep respect, presence, and sensitivity. Together we create a gentle, collaborative space where you can feel seen and supported as you explore your inner world.
This approach is both tender and powerful — it works from the inside out, often leading to meaningful shifts in a short time.
Body-Centred Awareness
The body is a profound source of wisdom.
Hakomi works from the “bottom up,” using body awareness as a direct pathway to emotional understanding and change. We might notice habitual tension, repeat an unconscious gesture, or bring attention to an impulse that’s been held back — all as ways to bring early learning into awareness and open space for something new.
The Missing Experience
At the heart of Hakomi is the idea of the missing experience — the healing moment that should have happened but didn’t.
By offering and embodying this new experience in the present, the nervous system learns it’s safe to relax old defences and receive what was once out of reach. This process helps integrate new emotional truths, rewiring the brain for greater ease, trust, and wholeness.
Curious but unsure?
Sessions: 60 minutes, in person (North Shore) or online.
For: Adults; or individual therapy; couples work available via mindfulness-informed approaches.
Let’s meet on Zoom and see if Hakomi fits your needs
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